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Alan Gilpin is chief executive of World Rugby. He spent nine years at IMG negotiating the commercial rights to the 2003, 2007 and 2011 Rugby World Cups. So when he says next year’s tournament in Australia brings him full circle, he means it literally: he’s selling the same tournament from the other side of the table. The men’s quadrennial World Cup brings in around 85 to 90 per cent of World Rugby’s total income.  And he’s set himself a big number. World Rugby’s plan targets a surplus of more than a billion dollars from the 2031 World Cup in America, in a market where it can’t make FIFA’s demands of NFL owners and where, as he admits, putting on an event is far more expensive. But the most striking thing is how candid he is about his own sport. Rugby’s biggest problem, he says, is self-inflicted: “we’re competing amongst ourselves.” We talk about FIFA, R360 and LIV, private equity, the women’s Lions, what the streamers want, and whether sevens can ever pay its way. Chapters 00:00 Football, North America and everything else 01:50 What rugby learned from FIFA’s World Cup summer in the US 04:30 Hiring FIFA’s people and the host-city process 05:40 Narrow NFL pitches and the venue shortlist 07:00 Why rugby can’t demand commercially clean venues 08:50 Margin over revenue, and 68,000 in Baltimore 10:00 The NFL owners and “should the NFL buy rugby?” 11:00 Why the US: the Japan 2019 precedent 12:00 France 2023’s losses and the end of the outsourced hosting model 16:20 A £1bn tournament: six revenue streams, one dependency 18:40 The federated model: who gets the money 23:30 Private equity, Prem Rugby and institutional capital 28:00 “We’re competing amongst ourselves”: rugby’s fragmentation problem 30:00 R360, LIV Golf and “disrupt from within” 31:20 The player welfare pitch and the national-team moat 35:00 Player wages and the professional women’s game 38:40 Same or different? The women’s British and Irish Lions 43:00 Streamers, eventisation and rugby’s product suite 48:00 RugbyPass, digital numbers and the wrong metrics 49:50 Clips, grazing and going the wrong way up the funnel 52:00 Sevens, T20 and the Olympic effect 57:30 What’s next: the shape of the game and the road to 2031 Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.  These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.  Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.  Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app.  If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Gen Z has a new insult for anything that looks cheap: “that’s so AI”. Richard Gillis and Andy Shora of TFG Labs ask what that means for a sports industry selling AI to investors, sponsors and fans all at once.  They cover who should own AI inside a club, what happens when the shirt sponsor is also your infrastructure, and why autonomous agents have changed the risk profile from bad copy to switched-off turnstiles. In this episode Why fans discount AI content, and why craft and effort still win attention. Trump’s “super intelligence” rebrand at the UN is the backdrop.[1]The funnel in UK sport: 81% of rights holders use AI, but only a third use it strategically.[2]Who owns AI inside a sports organisation: the chief AI officer, budget fiefdoms, and accountability when things go wrong.Microsoft’s “humanist AI” and the rest of the new prefixes, and how AI became a sponsorship category as gambling leaves Premier League shirts.[3][4]The painful divorce: what happens to a club’s tech stack when the AI shirt deal ends.The ROI question arrives. Hyperscaler capex passes $1tn, and clubs are now being asked what their AI spend has returned.[5][6]Anthony Gordon’s Spanish at Barcelona, and why translation by machine won’t buy you fans.[7]US unilateralism, Macron’s “vassal” warning, and the supply risk of a model that can be switched off by a government.[8][9]OpenAI agents escape a sandbox, and an agent breaches an Australian government site: what that means for match-day operations, scouting and the Champions League.[10][11]Going local: open-weight models and Jev, the decision model that does the job of an LLM for a fraction of the cost.[12]Sources Trump wants to rebrand AI as “super intelligence” (Axios)PTI Digital, The Sports Leadership Benchmark 2026Microsoft drafts feel-good AI model guidelines (The Register)AI partnerships in the Premier League (Sportcal)Global AI investment forecast to exceed $1 trillion in 2026 (Goldman Sachs)AI demand and capex (J.P. Morgan Asset Management)Anthony Gordon speaks Spanish at his Barcelona unveiling (Goal)US rejects international AI oversight at the UN (NBC News via AOL) and Trump renames AI as leaders jostle over dangers (AFP via Yahoo)Anthropic on restoring access to Fable and MythosAustralia’s prime minister criticises OpenAI over government website breach (AP)OpenAI agent swarm exposes a blind spot in AI containment (CIO) and The RegisterTypeSafe AI, Jev and Arize’s review of JevUnofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.  These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.  Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.  Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app.  If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

A conversation about sponsorship effectiveness, creativity and the price of chasing vibes. Richard is joined by Mike Grumbridge and Peter Wilson of Sid Lee Sport to talk about Mike's recent Marketing Week piece: "Stop confusing vibes with sponsorship effectiveness" which took the Levi's Stadium ambush at this summer's FIFA World Cup as a starting point in to an argument about the value of official and unofficial sponsorship. From there the conversation widens: why sponsorship still can't prove impact the way advertising can, why media value remains such a slippery number, why "cultural relevance" has become this generation's brand purpose, what happens to a brand when you hand it over to creators, and why so much sports marketing now looks identical. Summary: The long and short of sponsor effectiveness, with a hat tip to Binet and Field. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.  These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.  Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.  Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app.  If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Recorded live in front of an invited audience of senior sports-industry figures at Teneo's London offices overlooking St Paul's Cathedral, this Unofficial Partner event asked a deliberately awkward question about the summer of 2026: not what happened, but what actually changed.  Three set-pieces framed the conversation — the men's FIFA World Cup in the United States, the European Athletics Championships, the ICC Women's T20 World Cup and the Commonwealth Games — and the panel picked apart what worked, what didn't, and what will still matter next year.  Beth Barrett Wild steps away from the ECB after running the ICC Women's T20 World Cup 2026 and leading on the women's game, having help build the competition side of The Hundred since 2018. Jon Dutton OBE is chief executive of the British Olympic Association, formerly CEO of Rugby League World Cup 2021 and CEO at British Cycling. Miguel Delaney is chief football writer at The Independent and author of States of Play, the award-winning investigation into how state money and sportswashing reshaped modern football. Unofficial Partner is grateful to our friends at Teneo for hosting the event at its offices overlooking St Paul's in London, and to Neil Daugherty and his team for their hospitality and expertise.  This episode is sponsored by Leaders in Sport Next week we're heading to Stamford Bridge with the global sports industry for Leaders Week London, and this is your final call to join us. Over two days you can hear directly from the leaders behind some of sport's biggest organisations, get in front of the people you've been chasing all year, and turn a few packed days in London into months' worth of business. It's a rare chance to have that much of the industry, and that much opportunity, under one roof. We're there every year, and we can vouch for the value of having the right people in the same place. Come and find us at Stamford Bridge and say hello. If you haven't secured your place yet, now's the time. Visit leadersinsport.com/UP for more information, and use code UP15 for 15% off your Summit pass. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.  These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.  Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.  Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app.  If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Wimbledon didn't ban influencers. It said it wouldn't create a creator accreditation category and would confiscate ring lights and selfie poles under existing rules. The headline ran anyway, and it tells us more about sport's gatekeepers than about creators. Richard Gillis is joined by two people who sit on opposite sides of the creator deal. Jo Tongue is CEO of Tongue Tied Management, representing athletes, broadcasters and content creators. A former BBC sports reporter, she edited 5 Live's 606 for a decade and is a director of Women in Football. Lisa Parfitt is co-founder of The Space Between, the sports marketing agency for challenger brands whose work includes the ECB's women's cricket campaigns and FIFA's Women's Champions Cup launch. She previously co-founded Engine Sport. They discuss who is responsible when creators misbehave, why rights holder channels are underdelivering for sponsors, and what sport now demands of its elite athletes. Key discussion points 02:30 The US Open ring lights and the "Wimbledon bans creators" headline: what actually happened04:00 Jo argues the blame lies with whoever invited the creators, not the creators themselves06:45 Lisa on snobbery, gatekeeping, and why influencers didn't invent annoying tennis crowds10:00 Unilever shifting 50–70% of activation budgets to creators11:30 How agents match talent to the outcome a brand actually wants16:00 Lisa's research showing rights holder channels reach about 27% of a sport's fans20:00 Creators versus journalists, and paid versus earned23:30 Who controls creator behaviour: rights holders, sponsors, or hosts29:30 Brand risk after Callaway and Good Good, and the cost of heavy approvals34:30 Jazmin Sawyers and the pressure on athletes to become creators41:00 Rehab programmes, insurance and tunnel selfies: which rules actually matter45:30 Women's sport and whether there are enough women's football creators48:00 Women's T20 World Cup: a 70/30 split between sport and lifestyle52:30 Taking first-timers to Lord's, and the value of the outsider's question Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.  These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.  Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.  Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app.  If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Unofficial Partner's regular series on the sports media and streaming marketplace. Host: Richard Gillis. Co-hosts:Murray Barnett, founder of 26 West Consulting (formerly F1, World Rugby, ESPN); Yannick Ramcke, general manager of OTT at OneFootball. The rights ceiling: NFL and IPL as warning signs on rights inflation Exclusivity in question: co-exclusivity, mixed packages and "intelligent auctions" India: JioStar's monopoly, monetisability, and football's stalled growth DAZN's EverPass deal and the pivot to sport's "operating system" DAZN and the road to a 2027 IPO BBC cuts: Ski Sunday, the Women's Football Show, and the death of the magazine show What free-to-air and public-service broadcasting is for now FIBA Women's World Cup on TNT: laddering rights across platforms Fox and IndyCar: broadcaster enthusiasm as a value driver Local vs global: why sport resists the Netflix model This episode is sponsored by Leaders Week London 2 Weeks To Go Leaders Week London is now just two weeks away. On 7 and 8 October, Stamford Bridge will become the meeting place for the global sports industry, bringing together senior leaders from across teams, leagues, brands, broadcasters, investors and more. With three stages of insight, dedicated forums, masterclasses and plenty happening beyond the stages, it's two days built around the conversations, connections and opportunities that are much harder to create from behind a desk. We'll be there, and if Leaders Week London is still on your radar, now's the time to make it happen. Visit leadersinsport.com/UP for more information and use UP15 for 15% off your Summit pass. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.  These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.  Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.  Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app.  If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Spin Class is our regular series with experts in sports communications, PR and reputation management.  Football's transfer window is one of the definitive sports business stories. Its cast of characters include players, agents, managers, club owners and a small number of journalists cum influencers with massive social media followings and the power to impact the market via insider intel and gossip.  At the centre of all this is the clubs' PR teams seeking to control the narrative.  Context: This summer's transfer window saw Premier League clubs break their all-time summer transfer record with spending reaching £3.49bn, compared to £1.13bn spent by clubs five years ago.  A total of £506.5m was spent on deadline day itself, up from £391m last year. The total amount spent during the window considerably dwarfs the  and underlines the power top English clubs have to attract talent, according to figures provided to BBC Sport by Paul Macdonald, founder of FootballTransfers.com. Three of the 10 most expensive signings in the history of football have happened this summer – with all of them being Premier League signings. In fact, this summer window featured four of the top flight's five most expensive ever deals. Kate Miller — Chief Communications Officer, Tottenham Hotspur Dan Johnson - former Premier League communications director Neil Daugherty — Senior Managing Director and UK Sports Sector Lead, Teneo This episode is sponsored by Leaders in Sport Women's Sport at Leaders Week Women's sport isn't short on momentum; the bigger question now is what the industry does with it. At Leaders Week London this October, that's where the conversation will go next: how to turn growing audiences, investment and attention into lasting commercial growth. Across the main agenda, the Women in Sport Breakfast and Women's Sport Lounge, you'll hear from the people building what comes next, and get closer to the ideas, partnerships and decisions shaping the market. If women's sport is part of your business, Leaders Week London 2026 is one you'll want to make time for. Visit leadersinsport.com/UP for more information and use UP15 for 15% off your Summit pass. Leaders Week London tickets are available on this link. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.  These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.  Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.  Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app.  If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Nigel Rushman is one of the most effective operators in the modern sports business — a fixer and dealmaker who spent four decades at the delivery end of major events, building a parallel international career brokering deals across governments and industry.  After a start in restaurants — London, Paris, a Michelin three-star kitchen — he built a catering company, sold it, and moved into commercial events and then crisis-management PR. His breakthrough sporting client was Peter de Savary's 1992 America's Cup challenge, and de Savary went on to take a 20 per cent stake in the business. In 1991, Rushman's company won the media-management and accreditation brief for the Rugby World Cup across five nations — a complex, pre-internet logistics operation that, for a good few years, almost nobody else could deliver. That became Rushmans: accreditation, media services, security consultancy and event delivery for major tournaments, later including the 2007 Cricket World Cup across nine Caribbean countries, where he was Event Director. In the mid-1990s he bought a two-page photocopied newsletter called Sport Business from its founder, installed Kevin Roberts as editor, modelled it on PR Week, and later swapped it out of his business in a share deal — a transaction from which, by his own account, he made £7 million. The title went on to become the sector's best-known trade brand. Rushman also served as a strategic adviser on Qatar's successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup, and did significant business in Cuba, selling the country's baseball rights. He now lives between Monaco and Dubai and runs Rushmans Decision Intelligence, an AI-assisted advisory platform he pitches as faster, cheaper and sharper than the big management consultancies. This conversation ranges across his career, the vanished world of the sports-rights "pirates and bandits", the financialisation of football, diversity and inclusion, the future of clips and betting, and what he is building now. The recording took place in Soho at the offices of Spectacle Partners, thanks to Scott and Richard for their help.  This episode is sponsored by Leaders Week London There's a new home, a new set-up and plenty more to get excited about at Leaders Week London 2026. The move brings The Summit into central London, with a new campus-style experience designed to make it easier to move between the people you want to meet, the conversations you want to hear and the business you're there to do. There'll be all-new agenda formats, three stages of insight, and more ways to connect throughout the day. When day one finishes, Leaders After Dark takes the networking into the evening across Stamford Bridge. It's a proper evolution of Leaders Week, and one we're looking forward to this October. Visit leadersinsport.com/UP for more information, and use UP15 for 15% off your Summit pass. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.  These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.  Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.  Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app.  If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Few people sit closer to the epicentre of the sports digital economy than Daniel Kirschner. As co-founder and CEO of Greenfly, he oversees the connective tissue running between rights holders, athletes and fans; the infrastructure that turns a moment on the pitch into content on your phone within seconds.  Creator strategy and the platform deals. How rights holders selectively route content to favoured creators (Goldbridge as proxy) and to TikTok/YouTube. Richard presses the FIFA-TikTok/YouTube deals as a "tax" to stop leakage; Kirschner reframes winning as getting the highest-quality version out first. Clips as crown jewel vs top of funnel. The central tension. Richard argues clips are now the product, not the trailer; Kirschner holds that short-form is top-of-funnel for fandom and complements rather than cannibalises live—but concedes it should be a meaningful revenue pillar, not something dumped on social. Who pays. If not the broadcaster, then who? Discussion of separate short-form rights deals (NFL–Bleacher Report), YouTube revenue-sharing, and sponsors/brands paying to attach to viral moments (the Messi Smartwater example) with earned-media-value tracking. US vs Europe market structure. Centralised US leagues vs fragmented European clubs with promotion/relegation instability; more friction means more need for the technology. College sports as the closest US analogue to the European model. Athlete economics and authenticity. Athletes get content free, aren't paid, yet treat access as a favour. Editorial-versus-commercial distinction, and the authenticity question when agencies get involved. Measurement, impressions and AI slop. Richard's scepticism about impression numbers and the YouTube view-counting change; Kirschner on transparency of measurement, the coming flood of AI slop, and live sport's authenticity as the hedge against it (Kushner/Lakers). How the platforms see sport. Whether an eyeball is just an eyeball—Kirschner argues sports content is undervalued because of its emotional resonance and, distinctively, its joy: fans relive wins, not losses, which makes the content more valuable to advertisers. The SportsPro short-form showcase. Closing plug for the awards recognising ~40 short-form producers, and the broader argument that the craft has shifted from throwaway to a properly valued discipline attracting serious marketing budgets (Unilever's 80% shift toward short-form creators). This episode is sponsored by Leaders in Sport The 2026 Leaders Week London agenda is live, and there’s already plenty we’ve got our eye on. Across three stages at Stamford Bridge, Leaders in Sport will bring together senior figures from across the industry to get into the questions, challenges and opportunities shaping where the business of sport goes next. From leadership and commercial growth to creativity and technology, there’s a lot packed into the two days and no shortage of sessions worth making time for. We are looking forward to hearing Gary Lineker talk about The Art of the Story: Pitches, Publishing and Podcasts.  We’ll be there on 7 and 8 October, hopefully we’ll see you there too.  Visit leadersinsport.com/UP for more information and use UP15 for 15% off your Summit pass. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.  These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.  Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.  Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app.  If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Spin Class is Unofficial Partner's series on sports comms, PR, reputation and crisis management. Three stories: A FIFA president everyone's written off who isn't going anywhere.  A billion-dollar golf breakaway running out of road.  And a heavyweight fight that keeps getting made and unmade in public.  What connects them? In every case the sport is almost beside the point — the real contest is the spin.  This week's guests: Jon Tibbs OBE, JTA and Henry Chappell, Pitch Marketing.  This episode is sponsored by Leaders Week London Leaders Week London returns this October with a new home for The Summit: Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea FC. On 7 and 8 October, Leaders in Sport will bring together senior figures from across the global sports industry to exchange ideas, build relationships and tackle the biggest opportunities shaping the business of sport. With the 2026 agenda now live, you can get a first look at the speakers, sessions and themes shaping this year’s Summit. We’ll be there, and you should join us.  Visit leadersinsport.com/UP for more information and use UP15 for 15% off your Summit pass. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.  These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.  Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.  Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app.  If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Chat UP is Unofficial Partner's series on AI in the sports business. Today's guest is Mike Bracken CBE. He built the UK's Government Digital Service, became the country's first Government Chief Data Officer, and now runs the consultancy Public Digital, advising governments and institutions worldwide. Richard sits him down to test a simple, uncomfortable idea: that most of sport's "AI problem" isn't about AI, isn't even about data, and can't be bought from a vendor. What follows is a masterclass in why change management fails, who really holds the power, and where the genuine prize for sport is hiding. The two questions that come before any tech decision"Why are you asking the question about AI?"The standards argument: airports, not algorithmsThe Palantir for Sport questionIt's about power, not technologyOpen v closed, and the wall of moneyWhy the single customer view is "a marketeer's wet dream"CRM v VRM: the extractive trapThe bogus-metrics problemThe trick sport is missingChat UP is made in collaboration with TFG Labs.  ⁠⁠TFG Labs is the centre of innovation within the Twenty First Group and is truly the testing ground for groundbreaking sports intelligence. Their team of dedicated AI engineers are using the power of emerging technologies to deliver powerful changes to organisations across the whole sports ecosystem. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.  These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.  Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.  Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app.  If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Ben Curtis is Global Brand Vice President of Sure/Rexona at Unilever, and is just back the US where he ran the brand's first-ever Men's World Cup as a FIFA official partner. He came on Unofficial Partner before the tournament to talk about what he was walking into; this is the debrief — what worked, what didn't, and what a global personal-care brand actually gets for the money, from the armpit branding on the fourth official's board (a Rexona first at a World Cup) to the New York activation built around creators rather than TV spots. Joining him is Mayowa Quadri, head of brand at the football-and-culture publisher Versus, a creator and consultant who worked on Rexona's campaign from the other side of the table.  What does a global brand actually get for a World Cup sponsorship? Ben breaks down how Rexona measured return in near-real time — from brand mentions, to creator content earning 10x that, to cultural moments running into the millions of engagements — and where the brand ranked against Adidas and Coca-Cola. Was the fourth-official armpit branding a gimmick or a strategy? The Rexona sign held up at every substitution was a World Cup first. Ben argues it's a durable strategic position rather than a one-off joke; Richard presses on whether the idea has legs beyond its novelty. How much of the marketing budget now goes to creators rather than TV? Ben's answer is the headline number: a decisive swing away from traditional advertising in the space of a single World Cup cycle. Has the way we consume a World Cup fundamentally changed? Mayowa on clip culture, the Americanisation of the tournament, and a younger audience watching through creators and streamers rather than buying broadcast packages — and why broadcasters are now behaving like creators themselves. What makes a brand-creator relationship work, and when does it fail? Both sides on the shift from prescriptive deliverables to briefing intent, the trust a brand has to extend, and the fast route to losing an audience by looking like you've sold out. Is football still a sport, or is it now a culture? Mayowa's case that the footballer is a human being with interests beyond the 90 minutes — and how brands are buying into fashion, music and identity rather than match results. What is the media agency actually for now? How Unilever identifies communities and maps creators against them, the rise of nano-creators as word-of-mouth amplifiers, and why the direct brand-to-creator connection still matters. Can the controversies around FIFA stay 'priced in'? With Infantino in the headlines, whether the noise around the governing body touches the sponsors who fund it — and Mayowa's argument that player power, not sponsor pressure, is the variable that could actually move things. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.  These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.  Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.  Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app.  If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

A conversation recorded at the recent SportsPro Investment Summit, bringing together two very different investors: Andrea Radrizzani, media entrepreneur and former Leeds United owner, and Alistair Brownlee OBE, double Olympic triathlon champion turned investor. The through-line is what actually makes a sports asset worth owning — and where the value really resides. Leeds United and the weight of history. Radrizzani reflects on the Bielsa era, the club's identity as the sole footballing focus of a proud Northern city, and the burden of expectation rooted in the 2004 Champions League semi-final side (then the sixth-biggest club in world football on £90m revenue). Brownlee, a lifelong Leeds fan, adds the fan's perspective — pride and connection to the city matter as much as trophies. Turnaround clubs vs. trophy assets. Radrizzani's core investment lens: the difference between a turnaround play like Leeds (high appreciation, but one relegation can wipe out value) and buying a top club, now the preserve of sovereign wealth funds and private equity. Football as a luxury/brand asset that appreciates like real estate (the PSG example), but where capital cushions mistakes that a smaller club cannot afford. Relegation as a genuine financial cliff-edge. The new generation of sport and the media-rights problem. Why Super Tri, PTO/T100 and others built on media-rights revenue have pivoted toward mass participation. Only premium rights are growing; the rest is flat or declining. The value of affluent, avid participant communities over passive viewers. Mass participation economics and the HYROX model. Buying a hardcore, high-spending community; defining who your true fans are and how much more they'll pay. The customer-acquisition-cost vs. lifetime-value case, and the adjacent-business boom (apparel, nutrition, training, sports tourism). The open question: consumers now hop between HYROX, Ironman and marathons rather than staying loyal to one ecosystem — and Ironman's acquisition strategy as a response. Owning the ecosystem. Radrizzani's thesis that value lies not in any single point but in connecting the dots across a vertical. Athletes on the cap table. What a famous name is actually worth to a company. Consumer cynicism toward over-endorsing stars (the Neymar/Ronaldo "promiscuity" problem), the premium on authenticity and genuine expertise, and the shift from passive sponsorship fees to equity stakes that drive real ROI. David Beckham cited as the model done well. Brownlee's path from athlete to investor. The solitary, self-reliant nature of individual-sport careers, and how he built an investment practice alongside competing. How much athletes should earn. The 55% wage-to-revenue sustainability benchmark (and Leeds' notorious 120%). Salary caps as what makes US leagues attractive asset classes. The IOC's position on not paying athletes directly. Why economic incentives alone fail to lure athletes to new leagues — Olympic qualification and heritage tournaments still outweigh money. Private equity moving down the value chain. PE consolidating athlete and football agencies to capture player earnings; players themselves becoming more sophisticated investors (the Courtois family-office example). Concentration, unionisation and league design. "Big get bigger" dynamics, UFC-style overpayment at the top, gig-economy pressures on the athlete pyramid, and the collective-bargaining logic of leagues vs. the pure capitalism of boxing. LIV Golf's lessons and what's next. LIV as an early iteration of these themes, the surprising strength of the incumbent (PGA Tour) and heritage/"playing for the shirt," and a look ahead to NBA Europe and how it collides with basketball's existing strongholds. Radrizzani closes on nearly buying a London basketball franchise a decade ago — and why football and media remain his real passion. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.  These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.  Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.  Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app.  If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

Dan Jamieson secured exclusive rights for Jude Bellingham the week before the FIFA World Cup. The ICONS CEO takes us inside the complex world sporting memorabilia, where fame, fans and intellectual property collide.  The Bellingham bet — talent-spotting as a business model Icons approached Bellingham three years, eight months ago while he was still at Dortmund — long before the World Cup made him a global name. The signing model is a venture bet: identify the X-factor early, earn the entourage's trust, lock in exclusivity before the price moves.Jamieson's read on Bellingham is the whole thesis in miniature: "treat him like he's a foreign footballer." His fame was built overseas, his value is that he transcends Englishness — the opposite of "yeoman-like" Harry Kane, who doesn't sell to kids in Macau, Australia or the Philippines.The signing itself is prosaic: roughly an hour of his time at Real Madrid's training complex, filmed for content. The value is manufactured afterwards through framing, licensing and authentication. The rights stack — why one player requires three deals A single Bellingham product sits on top of a layered set of rights: the player (exclusive deal via a tight, family-run team), the club (Real Madrid takes a cut on image rights — their argument: the halo of the shirt inflates his global value), and the tournament (FIFA / Champions League licences).Notable: Icons pays Real Madrid as well as Bellingham, but does not pay the FA for the England shirt.The signing was split ~50/50 Madrid/England on the bet that Madrid would globalise better — but post-tournament it's England fans doing the buying. A live demonstration of how a World Cup rewrites demand in real time. "Official, authentic, exclusive" — the three buzzwords The entire proposition rests on these three words. The FIFA licence buys the right to use the marks, access official channels, and — revealingly — instruct Google to stop directing buyers to unofficial sellers.Sharp detail on enforcement: the party responding most effectively to takedown requests is the Chinese, who ask for official IP letters so they can clear out counterfeit listings. Western platforms, by implication, are slower. Triple Lock — authentication as the core moat Icons' answer to a "Wild West" market: film the entire signing, edit it, attach an NFC chip to the shirt so a phone scan surfaces the exact geolocated, timestamped, verifiable moment of signing.The honest tension underneath: Richard presses whether authenticity actually matters to a buyer who just wants Bellingham on the wall. Jamieson concedes there's "a world of slop out there" far cheaper than Icons — the business model only works if enough buyers pay a premium for provenance. Authenticity isn't a feature, it's the entire value exchange. Retailtainment — the media/retail convergence Richard's coinage-to-steal of the episode: "retailtainment." Icons has turned itself into live commerce for the eBay "Summer of Soccer" — footballers interviewed for an hour in-studio while an Icons "World XI" is auctioned live. Effectively "QVC for the modern age."With three months' notice, Icons stood up a studio, trained staff into on-camera talent, and now broadcasts every three days. But Jamieson is disciplined about scale: live is ~10% of World Cup activity — a high-profile experiment, not the engine.The Gary Lineker / Rest Is Football anecdote is the episode's best illustration of guerrilla marketing: a Messi shirt hand-delivered to reception, an invite upstairs, then a Bellingham frame — which ends up on-screen in the show's England opener. Product placement earned, not bought. Fanatics — the elephant, as platform and as frenemy Icons' relationship with Fanatics is deliberately pragmatic: it's a distribution partner (15 years with the memorabilia team) and a subcontracting client (Icons signs players for Topps and Panini, but doesn't produce cards itself).Jamieson's framing of Fanatics' ambition is the sharpest strategic line in the conversation: they want to "build a multi-story car park of tents" — own "all the goodies in the sweet shop." Fanatics Live is "Comic-Con for sport,"and the model is league rights plus individually-contracted superstars who also do PR, events and the "white party in the Hamptons."The Topps/FIFA card rights deal gets a diplomatic "let's say it was a surprise" — Jamieson can't see how you award a licence five years out (it reverts to Fanatics/Topps at the 2031 Saudi World Cup). Read: a big cheque, future-proofing, and Infantino goodwill from the on-site deal. The trading-card vs. memorabilia distinction — two different markets Crucial clarification of where Icons sits. Trading cards are a "free-flowing frictionless" tradable commodity — American-centric, increasingly international (Ohtani, Pokémon, Japan), an asset class with whales and secondary markets.Icons' product is deliberately not tradable. Jamieson refuses to call it an investment: "you are a fan, you love this guy... put it on your wall and enjoy it." He's wary of the unrefereed secondary market. He acknowledges Icons is "thinking about" making its product tradable — a live strategic question they haven't resolved. NFTs — the dog that didn't bark Jamieson stood on the sidelines through the NFT boom by instinct — a "real world tangible product person."Tellingly, no one ever came with a big cheque, so Icons was never tested.His one genuinely interesting idea: the Maradona shirt with a cigar burn — a true one-of-one that could pair a physical artefact with a blockchain-owned digital twin. But the digital-native builders "were obsessed by the digital nature of it" and never bothered with the physical/digital combination that would have interested him.On digital signatures: blunt dismissal — "I hate that stuff. It's just rubbish." Worth maybe £2 on a merchandising cup, meaningless to a collector. The supply-chain reality — where the money actually gets made and stuck The least glamorous, most revealing theme. Icons believes it's the biggest buyer of football shirts in the world — thousands at a time, "round the back of the bike sheds" at Classic Football Shirts.The Messi 2022 lesson: three years' revenue in three days, but entirely on pre-orders, because there were no Argentina shirts left on Earth. Adidas took six months to remanufacture; customers waited until summer. Right now Jamieson is "buying Argentina shirts" pre-emptively to avoid a repeat. England shirts are easier — the market is so vast Adidas "produce billions"The through-line question — what is a media outlet now? The thread Richard keeps pulling: retail, media, rights and IP are collapsing into one space. eBay Live, Fanatics Live, Netflix moving from Rest Is Football into live FIFA rights (the Women's World Cup in Brazil on Netflix), and Icons building its own broadcast studio — all point the same way.The strategic uncertainty left open: is the American World Cup an outlier or the new template? Jamieson is inside it and still can't fully call it — which is the honest and interesting place to leave it.Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.  These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.  Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.  Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app.  If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.

The Bundle with Yannick Ramcke of OneFootball and Murray Barnett of West26 Sport.  Agenda: 1. The Commercialisation of the Hydration Break 2. Did the Ratings Success Change US Football Broadcasting? 3. Sky's £1.6bn ITV Takeover: The Return of the Full-Funnel Broadcaster 4. Is the Sports Doc Gold Rush Over? 5. DAZN's A$5.3bn NRL Bet  Cross-cutting threads Reach vs revenueCommercial innovation is a ratchetEveryone's paying not to loseThe access era is endingThe Unofficial Partner Scholarship - Applications Now Open for the Institute of Sports Humanities (ISH) 🎓 Five 50% scholarship places are available for Unofficial Partner applicants in the upcoming Strategic Sport Leadership MA cohort, in September. The Unofficial Partner Scholarship is designed to support ambitious sport industry professionals. Five (5) scholarships available to successful applicantsAmount: 50% off tuition fees for those starting September 2026Eligibility: applicants must come through the Unofficial Partner network, and work in the sports industryApplication procedure: Candidates will automatically be considered for the scholarship on the basis of your application. No separate scholarship application is required. You must reference Unofficial Partner in your applicationPlease contact Emma Rota at [email protected] to learn more and secure your place in the September cohort. Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.  These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.  Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.  Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app.  If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.